The Shadow of the Beast
by Arhuaine
Summary: A vampire reflects on her past.


THE SHADOW OF THE BEAST  
  
The taste of blood on my lips is sweet, oh so sweet. I close my eyes and savour its warmth as it slips down my throat, filling my body with a gentle heat as if from a good brandy. At my feet lies the source of my nourishment, his corpulent face lit by the pallid glow of the streetlights. His eyes are closed and the expression he wears is one of mingled surprise and ecstasy. On the side of his neck two ruby beads glisten; again my mouth closes on his flesh and gently my tongue takes up the last precious drops and licks away the wound.  
  
He snores once as I shove him into a sitting position with his back against the alley wall, and for a moment I fear he may awaken before I can flee, but he only stirs and quietly mutters the name of some woman. Now he looks for all the world as if he just drank too much and stopped to take a nap. Sleep well, fat mortal, for this may not be the last time I ask for your Vitae.  
  
The streets are alive. They buzz with noise, electricity and action. I watch whores stalk their prey in short skirts and tall shoes, pretending to be doing something else but all the while alert and ready to pounce at a moment's notice.   
  
Ragged kids beg on street corners, "Homeless and hungry" pencilled on the torn-off lid of a cardboard box. Across the street a man in a designer suit gets out of his expensive car, on the prowl for junkies to fill his pockets with ill-gotten profit. Boys with ghetto blasters that screech some grotesque sound they call music pose on a street corner. They wait to ambush some poor young girl who does not realise how dangerous can be the hunting grounds of the city. The young girls hunt in packs that eye the boys from a distance, giggling and pointing and whispering amongst themselves.  
  
Every mortal that walks the streets at night is a predator of one sort or another. Whether the prey is money, or sex or drugs or just escape from the mundane daytime world, they cannot help being hunters. Like me. Yet, there the similarity ends.   
  
Once I was like them. Once I hunted wealth and success. I coveted a rich husband, social status as a woman of renown, and some sort of lifestyle that I thought was worthy of pursuit. I was a young woman to be seen with, around whom society revolved like a Catherine wheel. I wanted to live like that for ever, for life to be a whirl of delight. The world has changed a great deal since then, but people still crave the same things.  
  
He was rich and well-mannered, he wore the finest clothes and treated me like a queen. 'You can live forever', he told me, that night I felt the kiss upon my own pink neck. I was young, naive, I thought I was in love. So he took the life blood from my body and gave me back the prize I wish I had never chased.  
  
Now the world of day is alien to me. I no longer share any kinship with the mortal kind, my heart no longer beats as theirs and my cold grey skin knows only the light of the moon. All those things that I wanted then became unimportant; mortal desires vanished like spring frost to be replaced by a desire far more primitive; to simply survive.  
  
At first I revelled in my new existence. Like a child I delighted in new-found strengths, but slowly I began to understand the true horror of it. To live perpetually in the shadows is to become little more than a shadow of oneself, as gradually one feels the grasp on humanity weaken. Beneath the surface the Beast stirs, awaiting release. The smell of blood, the scent of death and decay, these are the things that feed my desires now.  
  
So the love inside me changed to loathing, for the one who had taken away my freedom and my life. I became a creature of hate, my passion burning for that which he had made me leave behind. Never to taste real food on my tongue, nor feel the gentle warmth of sunlight on my skin. Never to know the beauty of true love nor to give of myself in passion to another.  
  
I saw him last night for the first time in many years, he whom tradition calls my Sire. It was only a glimpse as he hurried from one dark shadow to another, but I knew it was him. I feel neither love nor hate for him now. All emotion within me is gone.  
  
A light rain begins to fall and like the mortals I move off the streets, into some narrow doorway lit with neon blue and pink from which come the scents of alcohol and dry ice and sweat. Steps lead below ground and here the noise is scarcely bearable. A sea of people heaves and gyrates beneath gaudy flashing lights.  
  
I seat myself in the darkest corner I can find, and sit alone until some greasy-haired youth comes up to me and smiles in a greedy kind of way. I refuse his offers of drink and intimacy. You are lucky, young man. I have already hunted tonight. When he realises he has failed to trap his quarry he moves off in search of easier meat.  
  
Ours is a lonely non-life. We mark our hunting-grounds and respect one another's right to claim a territory. Our numbers are few, restricted by the richness of prey within our urban domain. When we do meet, such occasions are wrought with suspicion and veiled malice. We of the Kindred fear little, save our fellows. For as we age, mortal blood no longer satisfies, and we crave the Vitae of our own kind, whilst in turn those of the younger generations seek the blood of their Elders for the power it bestows in it's richness.  
  
The Embrace and the life-sapping kiss do not confer immortality, as my Sire had claimed. Whilst we no longer age, nor succumb to disease, violence is a common way to meet the Final Death. Fire will burn us as surely as it burns any mortal and the greatest fear we have is of the greatest fire of all; the light of the sun will sear the flesh from our bones in moments. Such a death is said to provoke the most terrible agony. No mortal remains speak of these endings for with the Final Death, time steals back those decades and centuries that are owed to it, and nothing is left save a quantity of dust to be taken by the wind.  
  
These things are painful to contemplate as I return to the wet streets. It is quieter now. Most of the mortals have gone home or found a doorway in which to sleep off the remainder of the night. My waking hours too will soon be over, for shortly the sun will rise, shedding it's radiance upon the greyness of the city.  
  
I feel a sudden welling up of emotion, a blend of self-pity, anger and frustration. This tempered by the burning of the hunger within me and the knowledge that the Beast lurks menacingly beneath the surface. I lift my face to the pale half-moon and cry aloud, weeping red tears.  
  
To be a child of the night is to walk on the edge of madness. Always the Beast threatens to steal the last remnants of humanity. Always there is the fear of losing control, of the blood-frenzy that can strike at any time. Always there is the guilt that eats away the soul as one remembers glimpses of those times the Beast broke through and left a trail of death behind.  
  
The Beast is far from me now, as I sit upon the harbour wall, watching the yellow streetlights flicker on the surface of the murky water. I feel strangely calm though not unafraid, yet I know that I have made the right decision, that this is the only human thing to do.  
  
For almost two centuries I have lived, nay, existed, within the shadow of the Beast. Now I have won, and the Beast is defeated. For almost two centuries I have hidden in the darkness of the night away from mortal eyes, with only the moon to witness my crimes. Now I have absolved myself of those crimes, and I am granted freedom.  
  
I watch the sky brighten to a beautiful blood red, fading with the dawn to a shimmering gold.  
  



End file.
